James Campbell of The Guardian considers "restorations" through the publication of Raymond Carver’s short stories with handy slicing and rewriting work of his editor Gordon Lish taken out. On the Road by Jack Kerouac and Native Son by Richard Wright are other restoration cases that have drawn attention in the past few years. Read More
Two new translations of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace will be published in the United States this fall, one claiming to be the definitive version and the other claiming to be the long lost, more accessible first draft.
The first translation, out on Knopf in October, is by all-stars Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. It Read More
Carl Bernstein's next book: A biography of Hillary Clinton.
The deal is with Alfred A. Knopf, according to a press release issued this morning.
The title, A Woman In Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, seems a rather hopeful one given her current presidential bid.
The Watergate hero's book will be released on June Read More
Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. Alfred A. Knopf, 96 pages, $16.95.
With the publication in 1976 of The Selfish Gene, in which he argued that genes—not individuals—are the key units of natural selection, Richard Dawkins made his grand entrance into the world of evolutionary biology. A rakish lecturer on zoology at Read More
Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. Alfred A. Knopf, 96 pages, $16.95.
With the publication in 1976 of The Selfish Gene, in which he argued that genes—not individuals—are the key units of natural selection, Richard Dawkins made his grand entrance into the world of evolutionary biology. A rakish lecturer on zoology at Oxford, Read More
John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, by David S. Reynolds. Alfred A. Knopf, 578 pages, $35.
On Nov. 7, 1959, The Chicago Defender commemorated the centennial of John Brown’s death: “The paradox of Brown’s idealistic goals and his fearless methods are still being argued in Read More
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Alfred A. Knopf, 288 pages, $24.
In prose as bland as institutional pudding, Kazuo Ishiguro has compiled an unsettling horror story. It’s so constructed, or rigged, that it’s only in the last 20 or so pages (with a rather awkward explanation scene such as Hercule Poirot once relied Read More
Runaway, by Alice Munro. Alfred A. Knopf, 335 pages, $25.
Does anyone know if the word “coquette” was in vogue in Canada in the 1940′s? Because if it was, you can be sure that the gravely gifted and always interesting short-story writer Alice Munro, born in rural Ontario in 1931, didn’t get through Read More
Villages, by John Updike. Alfred A. Knopf, 321 pages, $25.
Villages, by sad coincidence, is John Updike’s 21st novel. Comparing it with Philip Roth’s newly published novel, The Plot Against America —also his 21st—is distressing if you’re a dedicated Updike fan. Whatever you think of the aesthetic merits of the Roth (and I happen Read More
Waterborne , by Bruce Murkoff. Alfred A. Knopf, 416 pages, $25.
Dam-building is a dramatic business. It demands explosives, ingenuity and legions of men. The Hoover Dam at Boulder was the largest engineering project of its age, built at the very nadir of the Great Depression. From 1931 to 1936, it provided employment for Read More
